


play me a memory

by JustStandingHere



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Drift Bond, Found Family Dynamics, Ghost Drifting, Living Together, M/M, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, POV Hermann Gottlieb, POV Newton Geiszler, Pining, Post Uprising, Slow Burn, also excessive references to raleigh becket's cooking skills, excessive references to high school literature
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-04
Updated: 2018-04-19
Packaged: 2019-04-18 03:34:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14204160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustStandingHere/pseuds/JustStandingHere
Summary: “You...argue, with him."“Yes.”“About what?”“Literature, mostly. Though we once had a conversation about who ruined our microwave, and that led to some interesting insight.”“Such as?”“That I was right, and the bastard did blow it up on purpose.” Mako stares at him. “What?”To help Newt recover from the Precursors, Hermann drifts with him, and then moves in with him. Everything that happens after the fact is just an unforeseen consequence.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to tumblr user tonyahardingapologist for helping with spelling/technical errors!
> 
> posting will be a bit shaky, i got a pretty busy term ahead of me. so be on the lookout!

He hates the color blue, now.

Before he was ambivalent to it. It was a chunk of a spectrum, nothing to worry about. He never understood how people could link colors to emotions, to experiences. Hermann sees the world in numbers. He can understand an emotional connection to pi, or to primes, or to 42. But not colors. Never colors, before.

Perhaps Newton does. Perhaps this is why.

Now he hates it with a level of vitriol he’s only been able to place in the vague. He lives near the ocean and prefers the days it is overcast, where the water comes up gray on the horizon. He loves clouds now more than ever, and sunsets. And it’s not like he cannot go outside when there are sunny blue skies, but it used to be a near thing. It used to be much worse than that.

When he thinks of Newton he even feels a little twinge of it, the same one that accompanies his usual, complicated irritation and subsequent fondness. It's because of the eyes, you see. His eyes are too blue. Hermann had noted that his eyes seemed even more vibrant after the drift, and had said so a week after the fact. It was a rare moment of openness that he found himself participating in more often than before. He was different. He had suddenly lost his preference for Chopin. He had said that exactly to Newton as they had organized their things, and that led to a discussion on other differences in themselves. Newton had developed an interest in argyle socks and found himself a little forgiving of people who wore crocs. Hermann, meanwhile, had suddenly gained a taste for music from the mid-2000s and lemon flavored candy. Hermann noted that even after the redness had faded, Newton’s eyes were just as vibrant. Newton laughed, a little uncomfortably, and decidedly changed the subject.

It is Newton’s eyes that Hermann sees when he wakes. It’s how the nightmares always end, the voices getting louder and louder until there is Newton screaming his name, corneas pink and nose bleeding. Hermann hurls forward with a gasp, clawing at the sheets in front of him. He breathes once, twice, before placing a hand on his heart. It's beating wildly, but he’s not dead or dying. He counts it as a plus.

When the panic subsides he looks to the clock. He hopes that it’s sometime that’s acceptable to be getting up at. He can never go back to sleep after these things. The numbers read 4AM. He sighs, resigned, and grabs the necessities from beside his bed: cane, glasses, book. He throws on his dressing gown and hobbles into the hallway.

He used to read when the nightmares got especially bad, in the beginning years after the world almost ended. He would read anything he could get his hands on, just to take his mind off of it all. At first he went through his library, but even that ran out. Then he borrowed books from other people. If things got desperate he would read the first thing he could grab. Magazines, travel brochures, the instructions on shampoo bottles. He knows too much about celebrities love lives now, and the many ways Head and Shoulders benefits your scalp. He always imagined Newton giving him a hard time for it, when it started. He imagined the fond, cocky smile on his face, his eyebrows raised. He wouldn't even speak, which would be ever the more _irritating_ , before asking something along the lines of “Thoughts on Brangelina?” which would have set off the alarms in Herman's brain _so_ fast, to which he would have countered with something along the lines of, “This probably comes from your side of the drift, Newton, and I see that you have suddenly start buttoning up your shirts?” to which Newt probably would have parroted back to him in an outrageous voice before adding, “Yeah, well, good on you for noticing that your side of the drift gave me a bit of stick up my ass” to which Hermann would have said--

Well.

Let's just say he has had a lot of free time on his hands to think about it.

The nightmares are much more frequent now, in the After, but he finds himself handling them better. At least now he has a purpose, with them. If he can’t go back to sleep he might as well make himself useful.

He’s still in his pajamas, he realizes, but that's becoming a more and more natural sight to see him in. A simple t-shirt, flannel bottoms, and brown slippers. The dressing gown is old, and used to be a rich red but has settled into a mottled pink with wash and wear. Hermann has never been one to prioritize his appearance, but in the After has found himself caring less and less about the odd stares he gets from his coworkers and the guards. He has heard the word “grandpa” be thrown around a couple times by the cadets, and has made sure to glare any time he hears it. It hasn't been helping much.

He rounds another corner and clambers into the elevator. He remembers, in the Before that was Before--in the before that involved a line down the middle of a room, and finding entrails next to his chalk--that he and Newton would have to share the elevator on their way to and from the lab respectively. They had the fire department called on them sometimes because the both of them would forget to press a button and continue arguing about things like how the other dressed or or who crossed the line in the lab that day or who ate the noodle soup so _clearly_ labeled in the fridge, honestly Newton can’t you read and yes I know you have six degrees don't pull that card on me again, they mean nothing if you can't learn the basic fundamentals on reading a label you _imbecile_ and--well generally the shouting was enough to make people call in noise complaints to LOCCENT anyways.

He thinks about arguing with Newt as the elevator hums, stops, dings. He thinks about arguing with him as he passes the guards in the hallway, passes the construction happening out in front of the shatterdome. He pauses for a moment to watch as they secure the head onto the shoulders of a Jaeger they haven't named yet, larger than the rest and being built with a different idea in mind. He decidedly does not think about what that idea is, and goes back to arguing with Newt. He remembers a spectacular one they had about a month into knowing each other that involved preserved jellyfish and Euler’s constant, and how horrible Hermann’s handwriting is. He smiles fondly at this as he flashes his security card to one of the guards standing in front of his destination. They nod, reluctantly, and step aside before opening the door.

“Hey hey hey, look who's back.” A pause. “Oh, what, this again?”

Hermann sighs, putting his glasses to his face. “There’s very little else to do, if I’m honest.”

“It doesn't help, you’ve _got_ to know that by now.”

“So you say,” he replies, smiling softly. He sits down in his chair, adjusting himself into a comfortable position. “I find it particularly soothing. It brings me...out of myself, I suppose.”

The thing laughs. “That's funny, that’s...that’s very funny, Hermann. Very funny.”

Hermann holds up the book. “From his personal collection. It was between this and _The Road_ , and even in these circumstances I have no want or need to read that nonsense.”

The thing doesn't respond. It directs Newt’s eyes to a stop to the left of Hermann, just so that he’s out of the periphery. It's a pattern he’s found in his presence. A conscious ignorance of his existence beyond trying to dismay him. He’s found it’s done the exact opposite.

He brings the book back down to his lap. Newt’s body is looking...better. He’s had a shower recently. His skin in a little bit paler, his eyes a little bit more manic. You would think it was him, no strings attached, except for the way that he moves. He doesn't-- _the thing_ doesn’t. It sits patiently, if a little exasperated, holding Newt’s body in an anticipatory yet tired slump. Newt, on the other hand, sits like someone has eternally stuffed ants down his sleeves. He has never been one to sit still, always jiggling his legs or tapping his fingers. The thing, though, only knows patience. It only knows the art of waiting quietly.

It is still sitting relatively motionless as Hermann clears his throat, opening up to where Newt had apparently left off. “They don't bother not talking out loud,” he reads, if a little bit incredulously, “about their hate secrets when I'm nearby because they think I'm deaf and dumb.”

Newt likes to annotate, it seems, because the book is covered in his color commentary, messily scrawled on the side. It is mostly a collection of emoticons drawn to react to whichever scene is playing out on the page, along with some sarcastic commentary and things you would write on a sticky note if you were a normal person. Some of them are so very Newt he can almost hear his voice saying them, and is hit with the oddest sensation of missing him when Newt’s face is not six feet from him.

“Everybody thinks so,” he continues, carefully plucking the words from the page, “I'm cagey enough to fool them that much.”

He gets so caught up in the annotations that he finds himself concentrating on them more than the actual words. The whole book is drivel to him, really. He never understood the fascination with this section of literature. That is not to say he does not admire Kelsey's dedication to a message, but he does not enjoy the crass, convoluted means to which he conveys it. He prefers Newt’s collection of science fiction, but a part of him thinks it might give the thing some ideas. And, besides biology textbooks and film novelizations, there isn’t much left. The thing must have gotten ridden of the rest.

“I hold my breath and figure, My God this time they’re gonna do it!” he reads aloud. “This time they let the hate build up too high and overloaded and they’re gonna--” He flips the page “--remind me to get groceries later today tear one another to pieces before they realize--”

A snort.

Hermann looks up, frowning. “What?”

“That's not what the book says,” the thing tells him.

“What is not what the book says?”

“The--the groceries...thing,” Newt replies. “That's something I wrote, dude. I thought you knew how to read.” There's a smile forming on his face.

“I can read better than you,” Hermann counters. “Though perhaps that is a low bar to judge oneself.”

“Hey, fuck off, dude, you can’t--” He stops. The smile fades and the thing goes back to looking to the left.

Hermann sobers a bit and clears his throat. “Tear one another to pieces before they realize what they’re doing,” he finishes. “But just as she starts cropping those sectioned arms…”

He continues reading, but only at an automatic level, letting the words fly over him, and the annotations Newt has made. Because he begins to hear a sound from the other side of the room. He ignores it for a bit, so as to not get his hopes up, but after a solid minute he looks up.

The thing is still holding Newt’s body in that slumped gates, directing his eyes to the left. All in all he is the picture of calculated agitation. Hermann knows this too well, but--his foot. Newt is jiggling his foot a bit impatiently, and he’s beginning to sigh. Hermann watches that foot until he forgets to look down at the page, trailing off and staring silently.

The foot taps one two three four, one two three four, one two three four and then stops, abruptly. The thing rolls Newt’s eyes. “Are you gonna keep going, or what?” it asks.

Hermann bites down a smile and continues.

* * *

Newt, prior to this, had only had one out of body experience. He had been up for about a solid week, eating once a day. It was over something--he doesn’t even remember, honestly, probably something stupid like midterms or publishing a paper. Something trivial, in retrospect. Not stupid. Never, ever stupid. But trivial in the grander scheme of twenty years.

He remembers suddenly looking at his hands and thinking: whose are those, really? And from there it all went downhill. Philosophical debate over debate in his head, culminating in a constant questioning of his own personality, his own sense of self. For a couple hours he thought he might be dead, or in a computer simulation. That he, himself, had gone unchanged as the world changed around him when it was the opposite that was true. The brain, you see, is a master of deception. If something is happening within it, it is not something that has happened, but something that is and will always be, to the brain. And the brain wants you to understand, to see what it is seeing and feel what it is feeling.

He blacked out a couple times. He distinctly remembers being in a grocery store with no memory of how he had gotten there, before blacking out again until he ended up back in his doorway with a pack of Oreos in his hand. He eventually passed out and slept for twenty hours after that, and woke up realizing everything he had thought for two days previous was fucking ridiculous.

So, really, Newt blames himself for not figuring out what was happening to him earlier.

It feels very similar, if a little more plausible as something that is happening to him rather than something that is him--mostly because of the voices. He should have noticed the voices earlier, but it's his brain. He's a genius, the only thing he trusts is his brain. Or, used to trust. Why would he think his brain had been co opted by someone else? Drifting doesn't work that way, drifting is like...like osmosis. A simple transfer. Give and take, and only what both parties can handle or else it breaks. If they can't, they're incompatible. And okay, the kaiju are obviously going to be different, you can't apply human drift factors to hooking yourself up to an alien hivemind. But you don't think about that kind of stuff when you're trying to stop the world ending.

So. Maybe it is his fault. Maybe it isn't. Give him a fucking break, he's already got enough on his plate as it is.

But back to him having an out of body experience. That’s as close to what he’s experiencing right now, if not with a little more self awareness, agency, and anger. He will black out, but he knows when it's coming. He can see his body moving, hear the words he is saying, but he doesn’t know _why_ he’s doing or saying them. He can infer, as one does watching a stranger from a bench across the street, but he can’t fully understand. Because it’s not him that’s doing any of this--he certainly isn’t sneering at Stacker Pentecost’s _son_ , for fuck’s sake, because Jake is one of his best bros. And he isn’t talking down to humanity because humanity’s awesome, if not a little bit typical. But that is definitely his face and his voice doing that, so. Where does that leave him?

He’s been trying to form an idea of what it’s like to be him right now, to tell people in the future. He’s not strong enough to break and say it out loud to someone, preferably Hermann--and he probably never will be, but Newt is nothing without a plethora of what-if scenarios. And he supposes the closest metaphorical equivalent you could make to what’s happening right now is that he’s drowning, very slowly, within the waters of his own psyche which have been co opted very sneakily and rudely to serve the purpose of previously awesome, currently horrible aliens. The drowning is slow because--well, Newt’s theorized, when he can theorize, that they can’t work with dead tissue. And they’ve needed a template for human behavior--which, ha, bad choice there buddy. They need his body, his voice, and his memories to build the perfect kind of vessel. Killing him quickly would be counterintuitive because after all, what’s a parasite without its host? What happens then, huh?

So he’s drowning a little bit. A lot of a bit. But he can hear and see things pretty fine, most of the time.

And there are times--

Well.

There are times like this, where Hermann is reading _One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest_ and obviously hating it, from the way he reads it to the way his fingers seem to treat the pages as if they are covered in kaiju intestines, that Newt can swim. Not literally swim, because in truth he is not literally drowning, and the psyche is just a series of electrical signals--but metaphorically, he can swim. He can wade in place, and there are times like this where--

“Your annotations make no sense to me,” Hermann admits, ending the chapter. “You don’t even do it like you were taught to, honestly, it’s ridiculous.”

His body stays still. For a second, it looks where he wants to, where Hermann is scowling but also glancing between him and the page with some sort of hope on his face.

“Do you think this is a good strategy?” his voice asks. His eyebrows knit together, his voice the perfect cadence of calm. Newt watches. “I mean, like, realistically. We’ve talked with our father, we’ve talked with his--our friends before. Talking doesn’t do anything, reading doesn’t do anything.” He feels his shoulders pitch forward as far as his restraints allow. “All you’re doing is borrowing time you don’t have. And once that runs out, it’s our time to shine, baby.”

And wow, okay, Newt _had_ \--in the past, in the pure hypothetical because, come on--imagined calling Hermann baby, but it had usually been in the context of really good sex or doing it to annoy him. And now _that_ moment is ruined, as if they hadn’t taken everything else away, they just _had_ to call him baby, for some sick sadisitic reason. It pisses Newt off, honestly, in a way he doesn’t really get except for when he’s around Hermann, it’s--

The metaphorical water storms, and usually that would be enough to send him back down to drowning, but he finds himself still wading as Hermann glares and closes the book.

“I’m not doing it for him, or for humanity,” he says. “This is for me.”

“Oh, so you’re useless _and_ selfish, wow,” his voice says.

“All I am saying,” Hermann presses on, as if nothing has been said, “is that you could have organized your thoughts much better by using the standard form of annotation they teach in secondary school, instead of the mess you have going on here.”

Which, okay, on top of the whole his-body-being-a-dick thing, is just the fucking icing on the top of the cake. Newt is organized. Newt knows what he’s doing, okay, which is why it took so many years instead of say, one or two or however long it would’ve taken to break a normal person without _his_ intelligence. And his way of annotating literature is something that’s solely his, okay, and given everything recently Hermann could do him a favor and be a little nicer on this one thing that’s his, in this horrible, metaphorical maelstrom he’s currently living, and if Hermann’s can’t do that then--

“Oh, fuck you,” he finds himself saying--breathing, finally, but it feels a lot more seamless and contains a lot less gasping. “Fuck you, I am _awesome_ at annotating, okay. Just because I don’t do it with all the--the definitions and the chapter summaries doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. And also, sorry, but also you obviously hate this book, dude, I don’t know why or how but you do, and watching you read it is kind of making me nauseous.”

“Well excuse me for trying to be nice,” Hermann counters. “This is purely for your own entertainment, I’ll have you know. I hope you’re enjoying this drivel, because I honestly don’t understand a word of it, and what I do understand is complete and utter nonsense completely influenced by drugs--”

“That’s the _point_ , Jesus, it’s a stream of consciousness kind of writing!”

“It’s nothing but him masturbatorily praising himself for being above the supposed system, and furthermore--”

“Ohhhh, ‘furthermore’-- _furthermore_ , you’re wrong, because you’re missing the point, which is that he’s not praising himself, he’s just explaining what the system is in a fucking genius way, may I add--”

“If you are calling this genius then I suppose that explains a lot about your supposed intellect.” His lips quirk, amused.

He whistles, chuckles. “Oh blow fucking blow, Herms. Low fucking blow and besides, who the fuck are you talk when you’re up Tolkien’s asshole and the guy can’t make it one page without being all ‘ohhhh this is the history of this one elf building, let’s talk about that for 500 paragraphs ohhhhh’.”

There is a pause, and Newt comes to realize that this is an actual thing that is happening, and that whatever look on his face is something he’s doing on his own, and that Hermann is smiling.

“Your accent is terrible,” Hermann says, but he’s smiling. Oh god, he’s smiling.

“That’s--” Oh, and now Newt is smiling. And laughing a bit. “That’s the point, dude, that’s…”

It’s the most himself he’s felt in ages. He can feel time passing normally, knows he’s connected to his voice and his body. He looks down at his hands and knows they’re his. He’s still in water, and the storm is still raging but in this metaphor he’s got a rope, now, and Hermann is on the boat frantically trying to reel him in like some sort of fish, which is hilariously ironic.

Fuck, he’s got to tell Hermann. He’s got to explain the metaphor.

“There’s water, Hermann,” is what he gets out after a moment of silence. “There’s water, and a storm, and I’m--look, you gotta keep fishing for me, okay?”

Hermann frowns, but nods. “Okay,” he says, as if he understands when he very obviously isn’t.

“No, what I mean is--you have to,” he starts. He sighs. “Look, there’s something here, that’s me and you’ve gotta--” pull it out, is what he tries to say. But by then he’s back underwater, tired, and he hears himself say, “--gotta stay away from it, Hermann. It’s not safe. I’m not strong enough.”

Hermann looks at him, hums. His body starts glancing away from it, and Newt can see the metaphorical boat rocking along the waves, farther and farther away. He lets the current take them both. He’s exhausted.

“Well,” Hermann says. “I still think that your annotations are rubbish.”

“Who cares?” his voice responds. It snorts. “Who cares, Hermann?”

“I do,” Hermann says, “And so does Newt. It’s why we’re friends.”

His body doesn’t respond. Everything goes quiet. He hears Hermann walk out of the room a little while after that.

 _Hell yeah_ , Newt thinks, sinking further and further down. _He called me Newt. Score._

* * *

They find Mako a week after Mt. Fuji nearly self destructs.

In all the commotion no one had thought to check Sydney hospital records. There had been no bodies left in the explosion anyways, or so they had thought. And who would be suspect of a badly burnt woman coming into a hospital after such a quick and disastrous evacuation?

They transport her to the shatterdome immediately, with Beckett in tow. Hermann can’t even imagine the kind of emotions that had gone through the man’s head the past week, and keeps to himself. When he sees Raleigh holding Mako’s bandaged hand, rushing towards the medical bay and smiling--of all things, smiling--he can’t help but feel a little jealous. He quickly learns not to.

In light of putting her recovery first, the PPDC has installed a temporary secretary-general to assist Mako as she recovers. Hermann, so far, has had little to no interaction with the man, who is tall with cropped hair and yet seems to be the exact opposite of Pentecost, preferring to speak quietly and assuming everyone will pay attention to him anyways.

Hermann recalls trying to discuss with him the matter of the fuel, and the fact that the testing teams seemed to be treating it as if it wasn’t a limited source, only to be brushed off with a simple, “Look, son. The fuel’s great, and thanks for everything, but right now my focus is the rockets. You can go air your grievances with the team once we’re able to lift these bad boys into space. For now? Be patient.” General Kent had proceeded to pat him on the shoulder, twice, before attending to other matters.

He is still here, even though Mako has been working consistently for the past month. The PPDC has yet to pull him out. They’ve given him even more work, in fact, with no further indication of him leaving anytime soon. It is the best decision, given everything she has been through, but not the wisest. She has time to kill.

They find Mako a week after Mt. Fuji, and now it's been three months. She is sitting in front of Hermann’s desk, which is not an uncommon sight. She has taken to regular lunches with him when Jake or Raleigh are busy, which is fairly typical given the situation they've landed themselves in. Hermann finds himself a bit at odds with this, because for most of his life Mako has either been a child or his superior, and he is having trouble trying to think of himself as her equal.

“You keep calling me by rank when you speak to me,” Mako informs him, apropos of nothing.

Hermann starts a little. “Well,” he says, quickly recovering. “That's what one does in front of a superior,” he pauses, “Madam.”

Mako smiles warmly and laughs. “You don't need to do that here. I consider you a trusted friend.”

Hermann blinks. “You do?”

“Of course,” she says. “You have been working with me for more than ten years, Hermann. You can’t work that long together and not be friends.”

Something clangs a little in Hermann’s chest cavity, and he tries very hard not to think about yellow lines. “I suppose so.”

“And besides the fact, I find you to be very trustworthy and respectful. You don’t stare.”

Hermann is about to protest, because why _would_ he stare, Mako is a lovely young woman but there are a lot of factors at play that do not bring about the eventuality of him staring, before remembering that Mako’s left hand appears to be fused with red cellophane, a bit crinkled with new hills and valleys terraformed onto her skin. That she holds herself differently to accommodate for the patches of skin that tell the same kind of story. She has to wear a patch over her left eye because it is still healing. Her hair is undeniably shorter to compensate for what had burned off. Hermann remembers, suddenly, that he is now not the only one others are staring at and wondering about. He has been focusing so much on himself, on Newton, on the drift that he hadn't even noticed. He suddenly feels self-conscious about his own self-centered attitudes as of late.

The world almost ended, might end again, and he spends his free time reading books.

Useless and selfish, isn't that what the thing had called him? Maybe it was right.

“I don't have any reason to,” he tells her with a small smile. “And anyone who figures they do outside the medical profession is, quite frankly, an imbecile.”

Mako smiles. “Jake loves the patch,” she says. “He says it reminds him of pirates. He calls me Captain.” She laughs. “And Raleigh is just happy to see me alive, I think.”

“We all are,” Hermann says, because it's true. If they are allowed miracles, this is one of them. This is getting a little bit personal, and he shifts before deciding to bring up a new subject.

Mako, however, is just as quick to the draw. “How is Dr. Geiszler?” she asks as he poised to speak.

Hermann shrugs. “You should be asking his monitors about that.”

“I have,” Mako concedes. “And they tell me he makes the most progress when he with you. So.” She nods her head, urging him forward. “How is he doing?”

The move is so very reminiscent of the rest of the Pentecost family that it gives Hermann a bit of whiplash. “He is...progressing, I think. It is hard to tell sometimes, who is at the front. But I managed to converse with him a few times.”

“And?”

“Well, it’s mostly arguing.”

“You...argue, with him.”

“Yes.”

“About what?”

“Literature, mostly. Though we once had a conversation about who ruined our microwave, and that led to some interesting insight.”

“Such as?”

“That I was right, and the bastard did blow it up on purpose.” Mako stares at him. “What?”

“Have you managed to talk about the Precursors?”

He shifts uncomfortably. “As much as possible, I suppose. He usually loses control around that point.”

“And what has he told you?”

“Well he can't process much of it, I can tell you that. Most of what comes out is nonsense. I think the neural load is too much for him in the state he’s in. He keeps mentioning water.”

“Water?”

He shakes his head. “I think it's another one of his metaphors.” He spits the word out like venom; Newt and his proclivity towards being as indirect as possible are beginning to annoy him now more than ever.

Mako frowns. “How do you know?”

Hermann shakes his head. “I've known the man for twenty--” _Ten_ , his thoughts supply. _It’s ten_. “--years, I had to drift with him. I know him very well.” Probably better than he knows himself, at this point. But he doesn't say that.

Mako’s frown deepens, her gaze going distant. She looks at him like she’s solving a puzzle. Hermann is usually on the other end of this look, and finds himself feeling uncomfortable. Is this how his chalkboards feel? _They don’t feel anything_ , he reminds himself. _They’re chalkboards_. He mentally kicks himself. He had gotten better with that part of himself, the series of electrical impulses traveling with a big sign labeled ‘NEWTON GEISZLER’ along the side, but lately everything has been flying out the window.

Mako hums, which doesn’t spell out anything good. That is, for sure, the trademarked Pentecost hum. It’s the same hum that resulted in him being hooked up to a kaiju fetus via a piece of trash.

He is expecting her to ask something extremely dangerous of him, to which he will most definitely say yes, but instead what comes out of her mouth is, “I have to talk to Jake. This was a wonderful lunch, Hermann. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He replies his similar regards, and finds himself perplexed and frustrated when she closes the door behind her.

* * *

You know what Newt misses the most? Dome dinners.

It was this whole thing Pentecost had created to improve morale. Once a week they all just sat down. All of the staff, all of the pilots just hanging out with no regard for rank or anything. They tried for theme nights at first but it eventually dissolved into whoever had come (K-science, mostly, along with whoever was free at the time) sitting down at one big table dishing out fun stories and gossip from other departments. It once led to a game of truth or dare, but only the once. Newt hasn’t been able to eat mashed potatoes since.

 _If I get out of here_ , Newt thinks. _When I get out of here. When. When I do, I’m reinstating dome dinners._

Of course, they might have continued. But dome dinners were more of a Stacker Pentecost thing, as opposed to a PPDC thing. Maybe Mako kept them going? She would keep them going, maybe make it a potluck thing. He knows Raleigh really loves to cook. And there would be new people! Whole people he hasn’t met yet.

Or maybe he has.

Newt is tired. Newt is very, very tired.

Every day he seems to be getting closer and closer to breaking the surface, to getting to breathe for longer than ten seconds before being swept up in the storm again. His nose usually starts bleeding at that point, with a roaring headache from behind his left eye. It’s like drifting through garbage all over again. It’s like his body is deciding to remind him of what got him in this mess in the first place.

It’s easier with Hermann. With Hermann, there’s a life preserver being thrown at his feet. With Hermann he can talk for an hour about his taste in high school literature, about who dropped who’s glasses in a tank of ammonia, about Tendo having a house in the suburbs of San Diego. With Hermann all of Newt’s brainpower, kaiju or not, is devoted to outwitting him. To debating with him. To--to staring at him, sometimes, and chasing that odd feeling that’s got Newt’s heart getting the life squeezed out of it and dunked in tar, because he can. Because he feels the most himself when he finally catches it.

It’s easier with Hermann, is all that Newt’s saying, and it would be even easier if he could get some of Raleigh Becket’s sweet potato casserole. It would be the best, Newt hypothesizes, if he was at a dome dinner, with Hermann, eating said sweet potato casserole. And maybe holding Hermann’s hand under the table.

Newt wonders if Hermann would even let his hands near him again, considering what happened the last time, and firmly disqualifies that last idea. He’ll just settle for Hermann struggling to read Newt’s annotations.

“You have drawn a horse, in sparkly gel pen, next to the line ‘Stay gold, Ponyboy’,” he notes. He’s trying to act compassionate and patient, which is not a good look on Hermann.

“Yeah, Ms. Grady didn’t like that very much either,” Newt concedes. “I ended up skipping a grade before she could do anything about it, but still.”

“You managed to skip a grade while drawing ponies in your books, how am I not surprised?”

“I mean I also did a study on cancer in sheep that got published in _Nature_ that same year, so.” He shrugs the best that he can, which is not very well.

Hermann shakes his head. “You never cease to amaze me, Newton.”

It’s said with such genuine, exasperated fondness that Newt can’t help but pause. Hermann takes this as a note to start reading again. He gets a few lines down, obviously getting happier and happier as the book seems to be wrapping up. As the conversation begins the dwindle Hermann’s voice starts becoming more and more like background noise, the feeling in his chest fading away for something much more numb.

Newt is tired. Newt is very, very tired, but he’ll stay awake to hear Hermann try and narrate from the first person perspective of a teenage delinquent.

“You hate this, don’t you?” Newt interrupts.

Hermann adjusts the glasses on his face. “I don’t hate this, no.”

“You do, you look like you want to throw that book at my face.”

“Now, Newton, who would I be to throw a book at someone strapped to a chair?”

“Uh, a Doctor Hermann Gottlieb.” He sighs, and feels a small amount of control give when his body relaxes. He probably shouldn’t have done that. “Come on, Herms. You’re miserable.”

The man in question scowls. “I am not miserable.” He goes back to reading, and Newt goes back to slowly feeling the life ebb out of him.

The tide is rising. The life preserver is filling with water, and Newt is doing his best to wade as Hermann shuts the book with a grim look on his face.

“I’ll be bringing over something a little more palatable the next time,” Hermann says.

“Yeah, you do that,” Newt says. It takes more than a little energy to conjure up the smile he is so desperately feeling.

Hermann frowns. “Your nose is bleeding.”

“Oh, well thanks Captain Obvious.”

“Newton, are you alright?”

“It’s...water, neural overload, it’s fine.”

“It is obviously not fine.”

Newt does his best to grin. “Hey, can you bring by Raleigh’s sweet potato casserole next time?” he asks. “That would be awesome.”

“What--” Hermann starts, but that’s the moment Newt feels himself seizing, and then everything goes black.

* * *

Hermann is in the middle of tweaking his model of a possible, man made wormhole when Jake and Mako burst in with twin grins on their faces.

“General,” he says. “Ranger. What brings you here?”

“Nothing, I just figured Jake could sit in on our lunch,” Mako explains.

“Yeah, I wanted to, uh, discuss the whole rocket fuel thing with you,” Jake explains unconvincingly. He holds up a paper takeout bag. “I got pad thai.”

He looks between the two of them, and at Mako and Jake, and the barely restrained energy seizing their faces, and frowns. “What is it?”

“What’s what?” Mako asks in unison with Jake. Neither are convincing.

“This,” he says, gesturing with his hand. “This is what is what. Either you two are going to tell me something horrible or something horribly stupid. I worked with Newton for years, I know what that face means.”

“Actually,” Jake says. “Funny you should mention Newt.”

Hermann grips the table, moving to stand up. “Did something happen to him?”

“What? No, no. Sit down.”

Hermann complies, and Mako and Jake look at each other once before Mako leans on his desk. “We have an idea.”

“It’s--something,” Jake reassures. “I dunno if we can call it an idea right now, because it’s mostly theoretical, but--”

“--if it worked, it would not only be beneficial to our current mission, but helping Dr. Geiszler.”

“You might not like it,” Jake adds.

This piques Hermann’s interest. “Why?”

Jake grimaces. “It’s risky. And we have no idea whether it would work, given everything he’s been through, but it’s worth a try.”

“I have discussed with Jake and Raleigh and believe it to be the best course of action, pending your approval of course,” Mako says.

“It could give us access to the information Newt has,” Jake tells him. “It could lead us straight to where the Precursors are.”

“Everytime Newt tries to convey something to me about the Precursors he gets shut down,” Hermann reminds them. “He and I have tried multiple times, but at this point the neural load is too heavy. He can barely hold a normal conversation before seizing.”

“Do you believe he would be able to supply for information if he wasn’t under such a heavy neural load?” Mako asks. She raises an eyebrow, patch shifting ever so slightly.

Hermann frowns. “Well, yes. I think that if he wasn’t carrying the information supplied via years of drifting with a hivemind--well, not only would be able to supply information, but he might just be able to fight them off.” He pauses. Realizes what he has just said.

They want Newt to drift with someone. One of their rangers, most likely. Someone with good interrogation skills. The establishing of a stronger neural link would theoretically weaken the one between Newt and the Precursors. But what would happen after? He cannot imagine Newt drifting with anyone else, as childish as it may seem. Would it weaken the link they already have? And, not to mention, the safety concerns. He knows that drifting with the kaiju hivemind is not something to be trifled with.

He looks at Mako with wide eyes. “Miss Mori, are you really--it would be _extremely_ dangerous for the other person involved.”

“Yes,” Jake says. “Yes, it is. But we also have someone who has dealt with these kinds of things before.” He looks, pointedly to Hermann.

Oh.

“ _Me?_ You want me to drift with Newt?”

“You are drift compatible with him,” Mako reasons. “And you have been able to take the brunt of the hivemind with no fatal consequences. You also carry a lot of memories of him, and I believe that as those characteristics are reintroduced to Dr. Geiszler, he will slowly gain control of his consciousness.”

“And you can accurately sift through whatever information you find about the Precursors,” Jake adds. “It’s a win-win situation.”

“It is also extremely risky,” Mako says, voice suddenly unsure. “But it is miles better than the other options being proposed.”

Hermann feels himself go cold. “Other options,” he repeats. “There are other options.”

“There’s been some talk among the higher ups,” Jake says. “The ones even higher up than us. It’s recent talk, but it’s not pretty.”

Hermann thinks about these other options. He knows, from their perspective, that the life of one man outweighs the lives of millions. And maybe it does. If Newt were here they could get into a massive row over ethics, and the trolley problem, and Newt would probably be stupid enough to law himself down on the metaphorical train tracks and ask him to pull the lever. But Newt isn’t here right now, not all the way, and Hermann would keep the lever steady anyways.

“We know it’s not an easy question to ask,” Jake supplies.

It isn’t, is it? Or it shouldn’t be, but Hermann has been getting up before dawn nearly every morning, is the thing. He spends most of his time outside of work watching the ocean turn black and making up arguments he can’t have. He has the creeping feeling that Mako, the woman with burn scars on her body, is eating lunch with him slightly out of pity. Not that he doesn’t need it, but still. It’s the principle of the thing, and the thing is that he would like to have his friend back, but doesn’t, and up until now he’s been doing guesswork on how to get him back. And Hermann _hates_ guesswork.

So the question isn’t easy, but the answer most definitely is.

“I’ll do it,” Hermann says. He watches the tension collectively melt out of Jake and Mako.

“It’s a good thing we didn’t actually purchase pad thai, then,” Mako says. Jake reaches into the paper bag and pulls out a bottle of wine. “It was meant to be used either in celebration, or as consolation.”

“Nate’s idea, actually,” Jake says, smiling.

“And Raleigh’s.”

“The both of them, separately. Nate first, though.”

Mako sighs with the kind of exasperation only a sibling can offer before looking to Hermann for permission.

Hermann looks at the model of the man made wormhole, turning slowly to his left, and turns it off.

Later that night, after he begrudgingly deposits himself into bed, he does not dream.


	2. Chapter Two

Hermann stares up at the tank with a vehemence.

It is essentially harmless. Stripped of the ammonia and currently floating in formaldehyde instead, it is essentially dead. Emphasis on the word ‘essentially’. Only Newt would really know if formaldehyde works as anything other than a functional preservative for a kaiju brain.

He keeps above his desk. He has half a mind to destroy it, but he finds himself looking at it more often than not for reassurance. The past ten years have not been Newton, they’ve been this floating chunk of tissue. The achingly slow tearing of the two of them over so many years was not the two of them, but the tissue. It is not Hermann’s fault they did not speak for so long, it is the tissue’s. So on and so forth.

 _Come have dinner and meet Alice_ , Newton had suggested so many times.

Hermann looks at the congee on his desk and cannot help but think, _Close enough_.

Hermann wonders, absently, if that had been a cry for help. And then looks back to find other possible cries for help. Odd, seemingly drunken phone calls in the middle of the night. Plans that were later cancelled. A billion things adding up to something Hermann can see now that the pieces are in their place. Before they had just been singular events, but now there is an underlying thread.

Hermann continues to stare at the tank. It was the tissue, he reasserts. Not him, nor I, but the tissue.

The congee has grown cold, still untouched. He should probably throw it out.

There is a knock on his door, and Hermann turns his chair towards the noise. “Come in,” he calls.

Jake enters, torso and head peeking around the doorway. “You ready?”

Hermann sighs and stands shakily, leaning heavily on his cane. “As I’ll ever be.”

* * *

Secretary-General Kent’s office is nothing if not clean. His books are in order, his surfaces dust-free. Even his touchpads are devoid of fingerprints. It reminds Hermann of the way his office used to be, in the Before that was Before. He feels like he’s violating the sanctity of the room just by existing in it.

Actually, looking at it a little closer now, Hermann retracts his earlier statement. It is not clean. Cleanliness would imply that it had once been a mess, once had clutter. This room has the feeling of always being empty of human interaction. The room is also devoid of any photographs, or cards, or any item involving sentimentality. There are a series of plaques and medals nailed to the wall, but besides that it is nothing but seamless, chipless white paint. No, Kent’s office is not clean. It is impersonal in a way Hermann cannot quantify.

Perhaps it is to accommodate space for the man it holds. Kent’s stature and voice demand attention to him and his words. He holds the proposal in his large hands, brow furrowed. Hermann looks over to Jake, who is the picture of stock still and patient. Mako, still technically on medical leave, is not supposed to be involved with any large-scale PPDC matters, but as he keeps letting his eyes wander across the room, he sees Jake texting, unseen under the desk with his face remaining impassive. 

Kent is still deeply invested in the file, eyes squinted. Hermann leans over, trying to be subtle, and can't help but flinch as Jake angles the phone in his direction, eyes still glued to Kent.

**08:21**

**Big Sis: has he said anything yet?**

**08:22**

**no nothing yet. good or bad?**

**08:24**

**Big Sis: good it means he’s giving it a chance**

**08:27**

**he’s been reading a looooooonnng time now**

**08:28**

**Big Sis: then sit still for a looooooonnng time he’s not someone you test your patience on**

**08:30**

**ok ok. oh now he hummed good or bad?**

**08:30**

**Big Sis: good**

**08:31**

**ok good I think he’s about to wrap up**

**08:31**

**also can you also tell gottlieb to calm down?**

Hermann feels his phone buzz in his pocket. Kent doesn't seem to notice. Hermann fishes the phone out of his pocket and looks at the screen.

**08:32**

**Secretary-General Mako Mori: calm down**

The sound of a throat clearing snaps his head up, and he sees that Kent has put the proposal down, finally, and is looking at him impatiently. Hermann puts the phone away quickly and shifts in his seat. He clasps his hands together and nods.

“Lemme get this straight,” Kent says. He clears his throat again for good measure. “ _You_ want to drift with the Precursor Emissary.”

“Dr. Geiszler, yes,” Hermann confirms, if not with a bit of annoyance. “I’ve done it once before with him, with great success.”

“I _know_ that it was a success, Dr. Gottlieb, considering I’m still sitting here alive. It's not about how well you did it the first go round, it's about whether or not this is worth our time and money.”

“Dr. Geiszler saved the world, general,” Hermann points out.

“And he almost ended it. I think he’s been given what he’s due.”

“General,” Jake interjects, before Hermann can say anything more. “That is not Dr. Geiszler. I've known Newt most of my life, and if we can get someone to drift with him he would be happy to supply any information he’s gotten from the Precursors. And if not, Dr. Gottlieb is will be getting the information anyways.”

Kent looks between the two of them. “This isn't just a ploy to save your friend, is it?”

“Saving Newton would only be a pleasant side effect,” Hermann says. He is lying, of course. “It is also much more efficient than other options one might pursue. I-If one were to pursue them. I worked out the figures. The drift is the least expensive, time consuming, and invasive option, in my opinion. Any other avenue would not only be inefficient and mostly likely sloppy but also a waste of time.” He pauses. “Sir.”

Kent looks at him and leans back in his chair. “Is your opinion objective?”

Jake frowns. “Sir, I don’t--”

Kent holds up a hand, cutting Jake off. “Because we are at war here, doctor. We do not have _time_ for personal wants or needs. If the sole objective, the sole goal here is to help Dr. Geiszler I cannot permit our time and energy be diverted while the fate of humanity is at risk.”

Hermann swallows. “The only goal here is for information,” he lies. “Newton is the one link we have to the Precursors without opening the breach. If he can tell us any news on their technologies, or their battle strategy, then our chances fare better than they ever have. This is our best option.”

Kent looks to Jake. “Anything to add, Ranger?”

Jake shakes his head.

Kent looks between the two of them. “Don’t make me regret this.”

Jake is the first to stand up, smiling. “You won’t, sir.” He shakes Kent’s hand, Hermann following, and they both exit the office with a profound sigh of relief.

“Longest twenty minutes of my life,” Jake mutters. He pulls out his phone, texts something, and Hermann feels his buzz a moment later. He pulls it out.

**08:37**

**Secretary-General Mako Mori: :D!!!**

**08:37**

**Secretary-General Mako Mori: lets do this**

* * *

It has been four days since Newt has seen Hermann. Or, at least, he thinks it has been four days. He may have blacked out at some point. He’s having a hard time keeping track of that, and time in general. All he knows is he’s been fed four meals, and sedated twice. But that could’ve just been an eventful day for all he knows. Which is very little, since Hermann hasn’t come by to read or talk or just say _hi_ , you know, like friends do. And that leaves Newt with nothing to do but fight, seize, and then get tended to by a lovely nurse that his voice likes to trash talk for some reason which is _not cool_ , because he seems to be a perfectly chill guy from what Newt can see. Which, again, is very little.

Who knew aliens hated glasses?

If/when Newt gets out, besides reinstating Dome Dinners, buying a new pair of glasses is his biggest mission. Also, you know, getting back at the assholes who are currently in control of his body. But he has to see to do that, so. Glasses are the priority. Right behind the potluck dinners. And possibly giving Hermann a hug, if he’ll allow it. Didn’t Hermann hug him at one point? Like, recently? That may have been a dream. He should also give Hermann a reading list of literature spanning from the 1950s to the 70s, just for good measure.

So, objectives: glasses, potluck dinners, hugging Hermann, giving Hermann a copy of _Howl_ , and then kicking some alien ass.

When Newt gets out.

 _If_ he gets out.

The metaphorical waters are calm right now. There’s not much to do when the guy you’re puppeteering is strapped to a chair with little to no outside stimulus, it seems. It’s...quiet. Not quiet enough that Newt can take a breather, maybe get a few words in or at least an eye twitch. But there’s no shouting either, or threatening, or vague statements regarding world domination.

It's _boring_.

Where the fuck is Hermann? Newt wants to know what book he's going to bring in. He has his hopes up that it's something Hermann actually likes so he see that little crinkle his eyes do when he’s happy reading. Also to mock him relentlessly for his taste in literature. Either or.

“Oh, what; you’re sad because your little boyfriend isn't around much?” he hears his voice say. So much for quiet. “Are you really that desperate for pity? We chose you because you’re smart, figure it out. He gave up on you.”

It's a sentence Newt’s heard probably close to a thousand times, in a thousand different iterations over the past ten years. He's gone through various cycles of believing it, doubting it, ignoring it, and then listening to it again. He opts to ignore it, mostly because he knows whose saying it, but still feels a pang in his metaphorical chest. He also hopes the guards won’t mention anything, as an aside, about the whole ‘boyfriend’ thing. They seem to be pretty tight-lipped on the whole. The nurse he’s not so sure about.

There is a clanging from outside the room, signaling that the door is opening. It is followed by not one, but three separate footsteps and all Newt can think is, _Is it mealtime already? I thought I just ate_ before he sees Hermann come in followed by Jake and Mako. They're all in civilian clothes, and all have a weird look of determination on their faces. Hermann especially.

“What's going on here?” his voice asks. His body shifts uncomfortably in its seat. “Are we having a party? Nobody told me.”

Jake moves forward first, face impassive, to Newt’s chair. “Hey, uh, what,” his voice continues, “what do you think you're doing there, huh?” His body starts to jolt in its chair, trying to break free. Jake tightens the restraints, and he feels his wrists begin to chafe as his body tries to shake himself free. That's gonna leave some scabs.

Jake looks back to Hermann, who hobbles forward. As he draws closer Newt realizes he’s carrying a sleeping mask and a set of headphones hooked up to an MP3 player. 

“Newt, if you can hear me,” he says. “This is going to be very confusing, but I assure you no harm will come to you.” Which is _totally_ the most reassuring thing to say right now. 

He places the headphones gingerly on Newt’s head, and they hold tight even has his body lashes out. The Precursors know something is up. Something not good. Whether the same thing applies to Newt is still up in the air. Hermann places the sleeping mask over his eyes and everything goes dark, sounds muffled. 

Then, Hermann presumably presses play on the MP3 player, because-- 

_You can dance, you can jive. Having the time of your life, oooohhhh_

It’s from Hermann’s personal library, something Newt didn’t know beforehand until the fact springs out of his head like it’s nothing. It’s less common nowadays, but he remembers the sensation from his first couple weeks after Kaiju Drift #2. Back then it happened at least five times day, some random stimulus--a song, a phrase, the mere mention of crocs once which was a whole journey in it of itself--would come along, and Newt would get blasted with a reaction or memory that wasn’t his own. Distance, of course, and time factoring in, he hasn’t felt this kind of sensation in years. There’s not much of Hermann left where his brain is concerned, apart from what Newt’s got left in his own personal memory banks and some vague interpretations of irritation from the hivemind. So, all things considered, Newt likes this change of pace. 

He feels his chair jolt forward and off of its brakes. It begins to roll forward with Newt having no knowledge of the destination in mind. 

Okay, maybe he doesn’t like this change of pace. 

His voice is saying something, mouth forming words, but he can’t hear them. All he hears is ABBA blasting loudly into his eardrums, taking him back to a weird place where he’s eight years old and his dad and uncle are blasting this song during New Years. It fills him with the weirdest variation of nostalgia he’s ever had. 

He feels the chair roll over bumps in the ground, lists a little as it swerves to the left. His mouth is still saying words. He tries to lip read from the inside, which is a weird experience altogether and almost impossible. He never catalogued how his mouth shaped words, maybe he should do that more often. He catches a “regret”, and a “puny” in there somewhere. Also a “trust you where you stand”, though “trust” might be “crush” when he thinks about it. 

His mouth keeps moving, and he feels a hand on his shoulder. It is warm, and calming, and carries that same kind of feeling that “Dancing Queen” is giving him. He concentrates on it, concentrates on Hermann’s words. _No harm will come to you_. _No harm will come to you_. _No harm will come to you_. Repeat it, like a mantra. The hand on his shoulder is warm, gripped tight if not only for reassurance but for support, lagging slightly. _No harm will come to you_. 

The chair swerves again, and the hand detaches from his shoulder. His mouth starts saying words again. He didn't realize it had stopped speaking. 

The chair stops, backs up. Nothing happens for a solid minute, enough that the song is ending and rolling into what Newt assumes will be “Take a Chance on Me” when the headphones are finally taken off. He can hear the music playing from them still, along with the hum and whir of machinery. There are voices talking in hushed tones, and sound of things clicking into place. He hears Hermann, if a little distantly. He can't make out the words but he sounds irritated and nervous. It is perhaps one of Hermann’s most common combination of emotions, besides irksome anger and anxious happiness. It usually doesn’t spell out good things. 

_No harm will come to you._

Yeah, okay. 

Okay. 

Okay, Newt is now _also_ irritated and nervous. 

The sleeping mask is pulled off, and his body blinks a couple times to adjust to the light. It is simultaneously darker and lighter than his holding cell, a sharp contrast of dark walls and neon computer screens. Jake is standing in front of him, eyes constantly looking elsewhere with a kind of thinly veiled giddiness on his face. Hermann is out of Newt’s direct periphery. Mako, who has an eyepatch now apparently which is equal parts _sick_ in the good way and _sick_ in the bad way on his part, is plugging in some numbers into the screen. It's backwards, and fuzzy, but Newt would recognize that software anywhere. 

“Oh, what, you’re gonna have me drift with some sad sack?” his voice asks. “That's your grand plan?” 

Jake shrugs. “It's worth a try, isn’t it?” 

His body leans forward in his chair. His wrists chafe. “Buddy, we are many,” his voice states. “We are multitudes. Compatibility aside, whichever sorry cadet you send in is gonna get fried. What do you think happened Newt, huh? What do you think happened to me?” 

Jake smiles smugly, then leans down with his hands on either side of Newt’s chair, effectively caging him. “I think you’re very good at tricking people. You tricked Newt into giving you his head, you tricked us into thinking you were him. And I think that you’re not going to give us, or him, anything unless we weedle it out of you. Unless we give ourselves a chance. We know what we’re getting into.” 

“Oh you do, do you?” his voice asks. It smiles wide. 

Jake pulls back, crossing his arms. “I do.” 

“Where’s the guy I’m gonna fry then, huh?” The smile’s still sticking. “Matter of fact, where’s Dr. Gottlieb? Smartest man in the whole building, shouldn't he be here for this?” 

Jake grins, then turns to nod at something. Newt’s neck whips to the left, where he sees Hermann sitting in a chair and adjusting the PONS interface on his head. He looks over and gives Newt a small, reassuring nod. 

The smile on his actual face falls. The smile on his metaphorical face, however, is a different story. 

“I think that answers your questions, yeah?” 

Jake’s instantly back in his line of vision again, Newt’s body suddenly tensing. He watches as the ranger maneuvers around the chair, grabs the headset. “It won’t work. It won’t, you’ve got a lost cause. Look. Look! Guys, it’s me.” _It’s not._ “It’s Newt.” _It’s really not._ “Just--just come on, I’m trying here. Don’t do the drift.” _Please do the drift._ “I’m begging here, give a guy a break.” He feels the headset clasp onto his skull, watches his field of vision shift back over to Hermann. “Herms, dude, you gotta believe me. I know this won’t work, I _know_ \--” 

“All set,” Jake says. “Gottlieb, you good?” 

Hermann nods, looks to Newt whose mouth is still moving, voice still in use. “Newton,” Hermann says through the ranting. His eyes are wide, and nervous, but staring straight at him. “I don’t do guesswork.” Which, in Hermann speak, is basically saying that he’s certain about this. And Hermann is nothing if not selective for what he’s certain about. “Hold tight.” 

“PONS System up and running,” says Mako from the computer. Newt’s body continues to jerk. “Specifics are all in order. Initiating neural handshake in 5...4...3...2--” 

His voice is still talking, his wrists now definitely bleeding, his muscle tensing and relaxing in a cacophonous sort of pseudo-symphony of bodily motion, twisting and thrashing and-- 

_He is riding his bike on a summer’s day while Karla sits on the curb, impatiently waiting for her turn and the sun is shining. The sun is shining, and he’s going as fast as he possibly can, and he feels so_ **content to just sit here, staring at the screen for hours as the man in the lizard costume rampages across the screen. He’s never seen anything like it, never seen something so large and terrifying** RAMPAGE ACROSS GALAXIES. THE GOAL OF SURVIVAL IS TO DOMINATE, IS TO ERADICATE ALL OTHER THREATS. WE ARE MANY, WE ARE MULTITUDES, WE ARE 

_scrawling numbers on any scrap of paper we find, seeing the patterns they create. There is so much chaos in the world and yet here everything makes sense, everything has an_ **order the chemistry kit from the infomercial he saw, he can totally fake being 18 or older if he means it’ll get here** FASTER. WE ARE STRONGER. WE COME FROM A UNIVERSE OF AMMONIA SEAS, OF SKIES COLORED BLACK OF RISING HEAT FROM THE EARTH AND POWER TOO GREAT TO 

_quantify the thing that he’s seeing, that the world is seeing as the monster rips through buildings like tissue paper, from someplace that can only be explained by things that were once theoretical. He can’t_ **believe that there’s something like this out there. He has to get his hands on it to understand it, see how something could work and breathe and** DESTROY. EVEN WITH SUCH IMMENSE POWER WE COULD GAIN CONTROL OF YOU LIVE THROUGH YOU BREATHE THROUGH 

_you have got to be joking, this is the man he has been writing to for all these years and sure he is intelligent but he is downright_ **impossible, who does this guy think he is** _he is the most irritating man to work with he is_ OURS **a complete and utter jackass, though he is kind of** HE IS OURS _a genius, albeit a messy one_ **oh wow okay he’s really doing this ok twice in one day that’s fine** _there’s so much we have to talk about_ **we can’t talk about anything I have a bad feeling about this about what’s happening to me** _I can head K-Science well enough, thank you_ **HEY I HAVE A GOOD IDEA** _alice, who is alice? Have we really fallen out of touch_ **come on he has to know it’s me it’s me** _its him_ **its me** _its him_ _**its**_

“Neural handshake fully initiated,” comes a voice. “Holding strong.” 

Newt blinks his eyes open. The room is still the same. His head is killing him a little bit, and his nose might be bleeding. “Oh god, not again,” he says. Then realizes he’s said it. Like, out loud. With the kind of effort it takes to conjure up a thought. He looks over to Hermann and feels a wave of anticipation. He keeps looking, and doesn’t feel the immediate pull to getting him out of his sight. “Holy shit,” he says. 

Then he laughs. He laughs _a lot_. 

Hermann starts laughing as well, either because he knows its worked or because Newt’s just _emanating_ waves of giddiness. He’s laughing. He’s laughing with the same kind of effort it takes for him to just exist, to be. And he can still feel something itching at the back of his head, there’s still water but it’s less of a deep ocean and more like a knee deep river, and as long he’s got equal footing he can keep breathing. 

The laughter eventually subsides, and he’s left with a very confused Jake Pentecost and Mako Mori. Newt finds himself suddenly unable to speak, not for the usual reasons but for the very old and also weirdly new reason of him having no words ready to say. 

_Newton, these are human beings_ , chimes Hermann without uttering a syllable. _Say hello._

“Hi,” he says. His throat hurts. How much screaming had his body done before this? It feels so raw. He tries to clear it before going any further. “Uh, I just wanna issue like a general apology about, y’know, everything? Just off the bat y’know get that--get that out of the way. And also say thank you, obviously.” 

He turns and gets a proper look at Hermann this time. His nose is bleeding. The PONS headset making his hair look even more ridiculous. He doesn’t look like he’s slept in two days. Hermann is looking back at him, and Newt feels such a sharp swell of fondness he finds himself trying to quiet it down before Hermann feels it. It’s instinctual and also, _definitely_ not the time. He hopes Hermann interprets it as something like joy, but all he can feel is a twinge of panic before things seem to settle down. Okay, bad sign. Distract, distract. “Hey Hermslice,” he says. 

He feels a twinge of annoyance as Hermann’s face drops. “I told you never to call me that,” he says. It is followed by a kind of fond exasperation, and the words _Hello Newton_ echoing inside his head. 

**Oh, I am so gonna keep calling you that. I felt that enjoyment.**

_You felt nothing. This is a big thing, now would you please take the gravity of this seriously for a moment?_

**Make me.**

_I forgot how much of an actual child you are._

**Aw, did you miss this?**

_Of course I missed this. That doesn’t mean I’m not actively regretting this conversation as we speak._

**Not speaking, technically.**

Newt is then sent the very clear and direct image of himself, from years ago, giving Hermann the middle finger. And he is _about_ to send over an even cruder image when he hears someone clear their throat. 

He whips his head around to follow the sound which, whoa, is a huge whiplash with how quick and easy that was. He’s more than a little dizzy, what with the whole drifting and sudden spike in relative free will and everything. 

“We will have to run an EEG,” Mako says. “Just to confirm.” 

“What? Yeah, of course. Of course. Do whatever you need to do, I am…” He doesn’t exactly know what he is right now. “Tired? But, awesome. Like super awesome.” 

“And after that we have some questions,” Jake continues. “For the both of you.” 

“For--” He barely gets the question out before he’s getting a quick cut of what’s being proposed here. “Oh. Oh! Wow, why didn’t I think of that before?” 

“To be fair, you have been relatively unconscious for the past three months,” Hermann supplies. 

“Well, yeah, but not really.” 

“Oh, yes. The ‘water’.” 

“ _Yes_ , the water. It was a great metaphor, I’ll have you know.” 

“I do know, Newton, I can feel your ridiculous metaphors swimming around in my head.” 

He scoffs. “They’re not ridiculous.” 

“They are.” 

“Are not.” 

“Are.” 

“Are not.” 

This goes on for a bit, throwing points and jabs at each other like they’re working in a for loop that goes on for infinity. Parameters: if Hermann says something stupid, then Newt will say something stupid back; if Hermann says something that makes sense, then say something about his hair. Keep running until someone interrupts them, or one of them suddenly collapses from exhaustion. Which might happen. Newt has been tired for a long, long time, and Hermann doesn’t look so great either. 

The process is so automatic he can catch Jake, who has now sidled up next to Mako, frowning and asking, “Were they always like this?” only to hear Mako reply, “Always.” 

The loop, after about 20 iterations, is finally kept from executing a 21st time when Jake clears his throat. “Dr. Geiszler, Dr. Gottlieb,” he says, with the tone of an exasperated father, which makes them both shut up and feel a little bit ashamed since they’ve got ten years on the guy. “Not that I’m not enjoying this, because I am. Greatly. But we do have to get to work.” 

They both nod. “Right, yeah,” Newt agrees. There goes that bigass mushy fond feeling again. He quickly puts a lid on it. “Oh, hey one more thing? Can one of you guys get me some glasses? I’m blind as shit right now.” 

* * *

The session goes so well that Hermann thinks he’s dreaming. He might be; he hasn’t slept much as of late.  


There is, of course, the cautionary EEG, which shows results that are nothing like the ones Newt has displayed over the past couple months. Not that Hermann didn’t know that already, because while he can suddenly feel this weight, this odd sort of clawing at his skull he can also feel Newt and the unbridled joy that is radiating off of him. It feels a bit like the sun, the kind of warmth he feels as Jake and Mako ask questions and write down Hermann and Newt’s answers. What sort of properties does the kaiju Anteverse hold? Are they truly sustainable just as brains? What kind of technology allows them to break through dimensional barriers? The answers come easily, like they’re asking Hermann where he went to school or what he had for breakfast. Which was nothing. He found eating to be just as impossible as sleep.  


“Dude,” Newt says at one point, in the middle of answering a question regarding elements used in the cloning process. “Eat a Snickers bar.”  


“Why,” Hermann asks, “on Earth would I eat a Snickers bar?”  


“Because I can literally feel the hangry radiating off of you. _Literally_ literally.”  


Hermann scowls. “I’m fine, thank you.”  


“Dude, our minds are connected. You can’t lie to me.” A memory suddenly passes through him, of the dinners they used before the world almost ended, and all of the food. 

His stomach grumbles. Newt grins. “Huh, see?”  


Hermann desperately does not think of how he felt when he looked at Newt as they came out of the neural handshake, and the feeling of panic that seemed to emanate from the other man as soon as the emotion was regretfully sent over. No, he cannot lie. But he will not simply foist something so trivial, especially given what the other man has been through and he must be experiencing, onto Newt. To do so would be incredibly selfish, Hermann figures. So for now he will just concentrate on the hivemind currently rattling around in his head, and feel his emotions at a later, more convenient time. Preferably when Newt is unconscious.  


They find Newt a spare pair of glasses from one of the J-tech crew, and even though they aren’t his exact prescription or style he is grateful. He stays in the chair, cuffed, for reasons the four of them already know so well. They don’t know how long this is going to last, and what will happen when the effects of the Drift eventually wear off.  


Newt is fine for the day, after they find a stopping point in the questions and returned to his cell. They’re residual presence in each other’s head lasts afterward as well, which is to be expected. He is fine, and talkative, and lively. He insists that Mako bring back Dome Dinners, which she promises to do, and asks Jake about what it was like hacking Jaeger parts before getting into an in-depth discussion with him about Jaeger engineering and the kind of technology they’re using now. All the while he converses with Hermann in his head.  


Well. To call it conversing would be an insult to conversations. It is more like them continuously sending images and memories to each other, of pranks and wars they engaged with in the past and newer, fresher recollections of things they have experienced separate from each other. Not everything of course, not the whole story. But glimpses which they allow to front in each other’s heads versus the enormous backdrop of each other’s collective consciousness. To put it simply, they finally catch up with each other.  


Hermann can feel it coming when Newt finally begins losing control again. It isn’t as severe for him, but he now understands fully the kind of metaphor Newton was trying to push across. He feels every action begin to take double the energy. To simply exist is exhausting. He hasn’t felt this tired since university. He is, however, sleep deprived and the only thing in his stomach is the Snickers bar Newt so wonderfully recommended. So while he is exhausted, he finds himself holding steady, if not in desperate need of a nap.  


Newt however, begins to grow sluggish. It is still obvious, despite the initial handshake, that he carries the majority of the hivemind through his primary connection. Though Hermann can feel the kind of pressure he’s under, he is unable to help with it. He watches as Newt’s sentences become more and more strained, still invariably him but lagging. His expression becomes one Hermann is intimately familiar with, slumped in his chair and smiling but also shaking. It is nothing like the Newt he saw when they had completed the handshake.  


**Hey Hermann** he thinks at one point, hands clasped to stop the tremors. **I think it’s time everybody say goodbye for now.**  


Hermann can feel the clawing in Newt’s head, feel the way it’s beginning to scrape at his resolve, and nods. “We better give Newton time to rest,” Hermann says.  


Everyone files out of the room. Through the viewing window, Hermann watches as Newt’s body language slowly transforms. He doesn’t immediately change or simply seize as he usually has. It’s a gradual thing, and Hermann can feel it as Newt begins to sink lower, lower. His posture returns to an exhausted slump. His head tilts up. He has a fresh nosebleed.  


The thing sits patiently.  


“Dr. Gottlieb,” says Jake.  


“What?”  


“You’re--” Jake gestures to Hermann’s head.  


Hermann frowns, hand drifting over his face until it comes away wet under his nostrils. “Oh,” he breathes. He grabs a tissue from one of his pockets and stuffs it up his nose.  


They bring their results back to Kent, who is pleased and schedules another drift session in a week. Mako uses her limited powers as on-leave Secretary General to reestablish the weekly dinners, which earns some smiles from those who have been here since the war and confused eyebrows from those who haven’t. Mostly Nate and the cadets, who have been brought up post-Apocalypse Cancelling. Both Mako and Jake continuously update him on the group dinner project, which he is neither here nor there about.  


“It’s for Newt,” Mako explains at lunch. “If you want, you can give me anything you have to say for Raleigh.”  


Hermann huffs and refrains from doing so at the moment. He does make a request the day after for Raleigh to make sweet potato casserole for the first Dome Dinner in a week, but he is certain that the thought of it was not his.  


Life continues, surprisingly. Hermann reads to Newt in the mornings and finds him receptive and above water five minutes after he begins, and sees him last through the entire session without relapsing. At one point he asks one of the nurses about his progress.  


“He’s a little better on his own,” he says. He pulls up some EEG readings on the computer. “See that? That’s him before the drift. And this…” He switches over to another file, the wavelengths similar but the amplitude higher and lower depending on the section. “Is after the drift, on his own. But the real change happens during--” He pulls up one last reading, the waves drastically different altogether. “--this.”  


“When is this?” Hermann asks.  


“Right after one of your reading sessions,” the nurse tells him. “I mean, his readings always did look different after them. Residual neural bond, you know? Hell of a thing. But since you two recently drifted it’s been making a real difference.”  


Hermann stares at the chart, a little in awe. “Send these over to me,” he says. “Thank you.”  


They drift again, and it’s the same old song and dance. They bring the body back to the room, set up the system, and connect. Hermann finds himself glimpsing more memories, ones he hadn’t seen before in the initial handshake. If the first session was a reacquaintance, much like an awkward lunch, then this one is the conversation between old friends. There is a rhythm, with the memories exchanged between the two of them less trouble than before. It is easier to distinguish who is who, and also somehow harder. Deciphering the hivemind’s information is easy, but finding it in the first place seems to be a bit trickier. Almost as if it is hiding in the Drift itself. They schedule themselves for another one the week after.  


He had forgotten how wonderful and _weird_ the drift was. He supposes his situation is a little different, what with hivemind and the drift partner that spends half of his time unconscious. He finds himself catching snippets of Newt’s thoughts as the day goes on. Little sentences here and there that make no sense without the context of the hours long internal monologue Newt seems to have going constantly. It reminds him of when they used to share a lab and Newt would go on talking to himself, with Hermann only picking up a phrase once in a while like “Nah that’s ridiculous, frogs wouldn’t be able to do that” or “Wiggle? Wiggle. They wiggle. Oh my god, they wiggle.”  


Hermann feels a little less alone, he supposes. He has someone to talk and bicker his way through equations, has a kind of presence in his head that is constant. And as Newt improves their rapport begins to pick up. It is a little invasive, but Newt is still recovering, and it usually calms down into more of a hum of half-formed thoughts when they aren’t meaning to use it. When Hermann goes in to read the hum seems to fill the space, the room vibrating with a feeling that is so familiar and yet so unfamiliar, and so very very much the product of Newt Geiszler. More often than not, the feeling follows him out.  


He finds himself _singing_ one morning, without his knowledge. Low and under his breath, but the words coming out of his mouth nonetheless. He only recognizes that it is happening when he walks past Jake on the way to his office, mouth covered and face smiling.  


“Something good happen, I presume?” he asks.  


“Yes, something very, very good,” Jake says, removing his hand from his mouth. He looks to be near a breaking point of some kind. “May I ask you a question, Dr. Gottlieb?”  


He’s a little caught off guard, hoping it isn’t something serious, and nods. “Yes, of course.”  


His face seems to be attempting to keep an express under lock and key, and failing badly. “Are you really too sexy for your shirt?” Jake asks, before completely devolving into a fit of giggles.  


Hermann is about ask _why_ , in the name of God, Jake would ask him such a thing before he realizes that he has been singing the tune since he left his apartment. He feels his face heat up and decides to save whatever is left of his dignity by leaving.  


When he later tells Newton of the experience, blaming him for getting the song stuck in his head, Newton laughs for five minutes without stopping.

* * *

After the third drift the question ultimately starts shifting from _if_ to _when_. It is the most satisfying transition Hermann has ever felt, as things start to steadily improve. Newton is not fully better, no. He has not relapsed but there are times where it looks to be a near thing. He has been released from the chair, but months of sitting in it have accumulated into atrophy. Hermann has yet to see the man stand, and his hand shakes whenever he holds something. But Hermann will walk into the room and immediately see Newt, not something else entirely, and he considers that something of a major improvement.  


Hermann keeps records of his EEGs handy in a small folder in his desk. Physical, of course. He has begun to feel much more nostalgic for the physical in his growing years, reminding himself of his grandparents who used to hoard records and photographs like they were somehow holy, denouncing technology as something evil. Hermann has no qualms for modern day technology. But he finds himself craving things from Before the Before. He supposes it started with the books, his and Newt’s alike, and the collection that somehow has survived years of living along salty coastlines. Hermann’s is much more pristine, of course, as he knows to try and read in the city, or inside. Some of Newt’s books are bound with tape and some kind of force that defies all known laws of physics. Hermann will page through them and have sand spill out in the space between the spine and the binding.  


Hermann can’t help but imagine Newt on a beach somewhere, reading, the breeze trying to navigate itself around his hair. Does Newt like the ocean now? He used to be in love with it, but as things change from _if_ to _when_ , Hermann begins to wonder if Newt will, once he is released from his cell, pack up shop and make way for more inland pastures.  


That in it of itself leads to the other questions: as things shifting from _if_ to _when_ , what happens after? What happens after the _when?_  


It is a thought that keeps Hermann up at night, staring at the ceiling a little too fiercely. He keeps the door to his balcony open and hears the waves crash into the shatterdome itself. He read somewhere once that ocean sounds are supposed to ground you, but whoever wrote that never drifted from a creature of the deep. Still, the sound calms him. He tries not to think of the disturbing factors as to why.  


Hermann thinks of three possible, separate outcomes to when Newt is released, ranked in terms of how painful they will be when they occur.  


The best outcome involves leaving--truly leaving, and going to teach somewhere near water. Hermann has been considering the Jurassic Coast. As far as anyone knows, there’s nothing lurking in the Atlantic. They could easily secure a position with Cambridge, even if it is four hours away. They could do remote research, Hermann working on calculating integrals in matrix groups, and Newton could study the local marine biology. They would live peacefully in a small town, much like the ones Hermann used to fantasize living in and that Newton would outwardly hate but secretly adore. Preferably one populated with cottages. They could put a yellow line down the middle of it, and Newt would place an aquarium smack dab on the middle of it. In retaliation, Hermann would get a cat, which would put Newt perpetually on allergy medication. They’d have a rude welcome mat at their front door.  


It is what Hermann considers his preferred ending.  


It is also entirely unrealistic, given Newt’s tentative status as a war criminal in the eyes of the law.  


The second best outcome is Newt getting released on probationary terms, and getting to another shatterdome away from the fighting. It undoubtedly involves Hermann transferring with him. Somewhere quiet and near-abandoned. Perhaps Anchorage. The cold would affect Hermann immensely, but there is such a thing as portable heaters. 

Perhaps they would see old friends. Perhaps they could work on something together, in their diminished K-Science laboratory. Perhaps it could be like the old days.  


This is also unrealistic, given their inherent value as the two people on Earth with information regarding the Precursors.  


The worst outcome is that Newt is released from his cell, only to be put in another one. A nicer one, mind you, but another one nonetheless. He would have to talk to people through glass walls, in this fake imprisonment Hermann is creating. Hermann imagines the room as all white, and it terrifies him. There is a vase of flowers in the room, and even they are white. He reads to Newt through the glass pane, and they banter. It is essentially what they are doing now, but they have replaced the cuffs on Newt’s arms and legs with guards, and a No Touching policy, and unfulfilled promises. The worst outcome, in turn, involves a prison outbreak, a change of names, and reverting to the first outcome in the case that the third makes Hermann’s chest clench a little too violently.  


This particular outcome is--  


Hm.  


Let’s just say that Hermann would _like_ to say that this, too, is unrealistic. He really would.  


**You think too loud. You actually woke me up, that’s how loud you think.**  


Newt’s presence jolts him. He keeps himself in his bed, warm under the covers, and continues to stare up at the ceiling.  


_I am considering our options._  


**You’re worrying.**  


_Worrying is the simple act of being prepared for any and all outcomes._  


**Like me being in a loony bin?**  


_All outcomes._  


**You know how wonderful it is to wake up to a vision of being eternally trapped in a white room?**  


_I apologize. The next time I decide to worry for your well being I will make sure to do it as quietly as possible._  


**Yeah, thanks. You do that. Or, alternatively, you could stop worrying.**  


Hermann projects a graphic gesture, which Newt projects back, and it goes like this for some time before it devolves into half-formed, abstract concepts that they both understand but cannot articulate.  


_Do you not fear for your future?_ Hermann eventually asks, sending over the concept of being pressured to order at a restaurant.  


**Of course I do** , Newt says, volleying back with the concept of deja vu. **I’m terrified of it. I’m terrified enough for the both of us, is the thing.**  


Hermann sends over cooking something new for the first time. _The whole point of the drift is to share the neural load_ , he argues.  


There is a pause.  


Newt sends over the waiting period that goes into biochemistry undergrad lab work. **Okay, yeah. Fine.** Hermann smiles. **Then only worry half as much.**  


Hermann does not say anything. Instead, he sends over the concept of those friends you made during vacation as children, the ones you never saw again. Newt responds in kind with friends you only had during the summer. They volley back and forth, back and forth, until Hermann eventually falls asleep as the sun rises, projecting the concept of coming home for Christmas your first year on your own.

* * *

“You look like you got run over by a truck,” Newt says one day as Hermann enters the room, happily spooning applesauce from his chair. God, he missed quality food. Almost as much as he missed existing, but he’s been getting more and more used to that bit. Three drifts and he’s almost completely awake, baby. Tired, sure, because he can kind of feel when shit might go down, and that’s annoying. Talk about clench-central. And the whole ‘can’t stand up very well by oneself’ thing, but he’s working on it. He might get himself crutches. Or a cane, though that wouldn’t help much? But he’d look badass. And he could finally give Hermann some fucking payback.  


Anyways, he’s eating applesauce, debating the possibility in the future of tripping Hermann with his hypothetical new cane that _totally_ has a fancy ornate head on it, and wondering just how much money he could get if he tried to sell all of the bags that have begun to hang under Hermann’s eyes.  


Hermann glares at him. “I could say the same for you.”  


Which, ouch, and fair. He’s significantly pinker, and fuller, since he isn’t living off of adult vitamin mixes and protein shakes anymore. But he also is still getting used to eating things that _aren’t_ vitamin mixes and protein shakes. Hence the applesauce. He also hasn't seen sunlight in however many months, and has the muscle mass of a newborn baby. “Have you been sleeping?” he asks instead, opting to just deflect fully. “Please tell me that you’ve been sleeping.”  


Hermann has, in fact, not been sleeping. Newt knows this already, because if Hermann dreams _loud_. The nightmares have worsened--either a side effect of the drift or because he has new, much more horrifying images in his head to conjure up in the middle of the night. Or, seemingly terrifying. Newt kind of gets a blurry picture with it. Could be essentially harmless, but he assumes terrifying on account of the yelling and the fact that whenever they come his way he gets the most gut-wrenching flavor of deja vu out there.  


Hermann’s lip twists, and he sets down his bag. “As much as I can.”  


Newt nods. “Which is...never? Dude, I wanna yawn just looking at you.”  


“The Precursors did not damage your eloquence, it seems,” Hermann notes, organizing his things with routine ease before sitting down in his usual spot. His face does not allow for any further questions.  


Newt looks at him, tries not feel weirdly endeared, and decides to give in for once. “Okay, hurtful. Change of subject.” He inhales, knowing that if he doesn’t get all of this out Hermann won’t allow him to speak on it further. “I’m thinking of getting another tattoo, I think, when I get out of here. Maybe the really big one I somehow made? And yeah, I _know_ , wasn’t me, yadda yadda. But like, just right up the side of my leg.”  


Hermann frowns. “Newton, what--.”  


“Also--we gotta change that dudes name. Mega-Kaiju? Way too on the nose. I was thinking something like Mitsugumi, or maybe Big Fuck.”  


“Newton.”  


“Anyway, I’ve already been running some designs in my head, maybe adding some flowers for some kind of symbol of rebirth or somethi--”  


“ _Newt_ ,” Hermann growls out. God, he still can’t get used to whole nickname thing. It’s twenty years in the making. Out of respect, Newt shuts ups for a hot second. “You are _not_ getting another tattoo of a kaiju.”  


Newt snorts. “Who are you, my mom?”  


“You have just _barely_ broken their hold on you, and you want them to claim more real estate on your person?”  


Newt frowns. “Dude, no. It’s not about that.”  


“Then what is it about?”  


He shrugs. He wishes he had a concrete answer as well, instead of the blind compulsion that seems to be itching at his skin. “I dunno, go look inside my head.” He twirls the spoon around his cranium. “Go Freud on my ass.”  


“You know I would never do that.”  


Oh.  


Oh, so that is different.  


“You wouldn’t?” he asks, trying not to sound like an idiot kid, or like someone desperately lovesick in the moment. He succeeds on the account that he doesn’t send a huge wave of abstract love thoughts Hermann’s way, through the kind of sheer force one gains after wrestling your own head for ten years. He fails on the account that his voice cracks.  


“Of course not,” Hermann says. His eyes are wide, brows downturned. Like it’s not even a question what his answer would be. Oh god, that’s so endearing. “Would you?”  


“No,” Newt replies, his voice as quiet as he’s ever heard it. “Never.”  


It feels like something very large is happening, and Newt all at once understands perfectly and is completely in the dark. Hermann continues to look at him, and Newt stares right back. He is slightly terrified of the scared, tentative openness he’s expressing right now. He doesn’t like how it makes him feel, like he’s unearthed himself so much that anyone or anything could take him by the wrists and pull him up by puppet strings. He doesn’t like the question it asks either, the simplicit stupidity of it. Projection is one thing, but injection is another, is that correct? it asks. Hermann grips his cane a little tighter, as he answers in kind. Yes, of course that is correct. Of _course_ that is correct. It had never once been considered as anything else.  


The feeling immediately withdraws, having served its purpose. For someone who has missed feeling things for so long, Newt finds himself getting increasingly pissed at his body’s ability to completely overcompensate for ten years of emotional neglect.  


Hermann doesn’t say anything for a small bit before proceeding to reach for his bag. “Shall we read Kesey again, or are we finally going to read something worthwhile?”  


The moment passes. Newt returns to his applesauce, doesn’t say anything, and grins. **What do you think, genius?**  


Hermann sighs and pulls out _Demon Box_.

* * *

When it happens, it during one of those times that Hermann is only worrying half as much as he should be. So the subsequent panic is Newt’s fault, really.  


Mako has a doctor’s appointment, and so Hermann decides to eat lunch in Newt’s cell. He goes from his office to the cafeteria, gets two trays. On his he piles on instant noodles, a bottled coffee, and a fruit cup, while Newt’s is mostly a bag of cheesy dusted crips, a small Milky Way Midnight, and a couple sticks of celery. Also, juice. The electrical systems with Newt’s name on them remind him, firmly, of getting juice to amp up Newt’s already dangerously high blood sugar levels.  


He balances the two trays, pays for them, and proceeds to pile everything on one side of them. He then goes back to his office and puts a copy of _Physical Review_ in his bag to read as they eat. He has a feeling that this will be one of Newton’s quieter days. He’s been standing more often now, beginning to pace but doing it slowly. He will no doubt be tired.  


He gives the tank above his desk a cursory glance. It is as stock still as ever. He slams down the impulse currently straddling his prefrontal cortex with Newt’s name written all over it, and does not give it the middle finger.  


Balancing his bag on his hip, his tray, and his cane he manages to maneuver the elevator. There is an article in the journal that he thinks is absolutely riveting, involving the creation of man made passageways through space using nuclear energy and unstable elements. There are also some interesting bits revolving around the finer aspects of string theory and quantum gravity that he thinks Newt will find fascinating.  


_Do not overburden him_ , a voice says, soundly very much like Hermann’s own. It is something he needs to remind himself of constantly. If he were in Newt’s position, exhausted and working through unwanted muscular atrophy, he would not want someone barging in, grating against his psyche with overexcitement.  
In fact, he has been in that exact situation before. With Newt. And he made a habit of snapping at him for it.  


So, as Hermann nears the cell’s floor, he decides that perhaps it would be best to keep his opinions on physics to a minimum today. If need be, he can speak with Jake or Mako later. Yes, he can do that. He has to keep reminding himself that they are friends. Hermann is not used to being friends with people he does not argue with on a regular basis.  


The elevator dings, and he walks again down the long hallway.  


He also has some current research that he is working on that he wishes to discuss. The rocket fuel is already powerful, it is now becoming less of a matter of distance and more of a matter of time, and destination. He has been wracking his brain trying to find a way to not only fold the multiverse in their favor, but do so in a way that does not involve travelling for many light years to the nearest gateway that may or may not land them in the Anteverse. He has been mostly relying on their prior readings of the Breach to off of, but that was artificially constructed. They do not have the means from which to artificially construct such a thing.  
It’s been growing increasingly frustrating.  


Hermann only hopes that if Newt is going to snap at him with something, it will be something constructive. And if not, he will at least be able to let off a little steam.  
The guards are not positioned by the door, which would be worrying if he didn’t know they usually timed their breaks to Hermann’s apparently predictable visiting schedule. He rearranges the mess in his arms, taking the bottle of juice into one hand as he keys himself in with the other.  


He carefully watches the delicate balance he has created with his tray, bag, and cane as he maneuvers his way through the doorway. “I hope you won’t throw a complete tantrum over my choice of Cheetos as you have in the past,” he says jokingly. “I know you prefer lime but they--”  


He turns, and sees an empty chair. His first thought is, _Oh, Newton must be walking_ , but he finds himself hearing no footsteps. He looks around and sees that he is the only person in the room.  


“--were out,” he finishes. He stares at the empty room for a few moments, as if by some miracle Newton will pop out from behind the chair as a part of a prank and give him a scare.  


He waits a few more seconds, takes tentative steps towards the center of the room. Nobody pops out. Everything is quiet.  


“Newton?” he asks, still living out the prank option in his head that is growing increasingly unlikely. He nears the chair and sets the tray down on it’s empty seat.  


Two likely scenarios run through Hermann’s head, and neither of them are good.  


Scenario one: Newt has relapsed, badly, to the point where they have moved him to an even more secure location that nobody knows about. The past few weeks have been a fluke, and he is now the same as he was a month ago. Maybe even three months ago. The drift has been considered a failure, and they are opting for more violent means from which to extract whatever information they will need in the foreseeable future that they do not have already.  


Scenario two: Newt has, without warning, died.  


These seem to be the two options immediately making their way around Hermann’s mind, completely circumventing his judgement and many other parts of his brain that would refute such claims.  


He does not recall exiting the cell, but he is out of it anyway, marching down the hallway at speeds he will later regret. Has his heartbeat always been this loud? This invasive to everything else? The hallway is empty. He steers toward the nurses station.  


He does not bother to knock, and manages to make the young man at the front desk jump.  


“Dr. Gottl--”  


“What has happened to Dr. Geiszler?”  


The man--his name might be Perry, or Percy; one of the two, Hermann doesn’t really care to find out at the moment--blinks once. Then twice. “Did you not get the memo?”  


“What memo?” Hermann asks.  


“The memo they sent out last night. Have you checked your emails?”  


Hermann has not, as a matter of fact, checked his emails. “Never mind that, what was it about?”  


“They released Dr. Geiszler this morning.”  


Alright, so. Death is not in the cards today. Thank goodness. But still--  


“Released him to where?”  


The nurse shrugs. “I can’t say.”  


Hermann looks down at the man, no older than twenty eight, and wonders if he is truly becoming his grandparents, because he has some serious qualms with the apparent youth of today. “You can’t say?”  


“Patient confidentiality, Dr. Gottlieb.”  


Hermann resists the impulse to throttle Perry/Percy. “Patient confidentiality.”  


“Yeah. Also, I don’t actually know?”  


“You don’t.”  


“I’m a nurse, so.”  


“ _So_.”  


“Yeah...hey are you just going to keep repeating what I’m saying? Not that I mind, it’s just that’s it...well, it’s terrifying. You look terrifying.”  


“Good,” Hermann grinds out.  


“Good?”  


“ _Good_.”  


The nurse smiles warily, fingers flying to his computer as if that will save him. He types something in and looks to the screen. “Uh, he was released a couple of hours ago, if that helps. Kent signed the release papers.”  


Ah, yes. Kent. “It does, thank you,” he says, and leaves without another word.  


The moment he is in the elevator he pulls out his phone, and dials one of the five numbers he has on it. “Kent has released him.”  


There is a pause on the other side of the line. “I wasn’t informed of this decision,” Mako says.  


“Neither was _I_.”  


“Released to where?”  


“I don’t know,” Hermann says. He presses the button for his apartment floor.  


“Why were we not informed?”  


“I don’t know.”  


“Why would they release him?”  


“I don’t know. I don’t know, I am--” Worried sick, anxious, leaning towards violence. “Concerned, as to the why. And the where.”  


“I as well.” There is a pause. “What do you need from me?”  


This was the purpose of the phone call, but now that the offer is in front of him Hermann finds himself feeling a bit ashamed. “Miss Mori, I cannot--”  


“Hermann,” Mako says. “Stop. Now, what do you need from me?”  


He swallows, takes a moment before considering. “I need access to Newton’s files,” Hermann says. This elevator is suddenly agonizingly slow. “Custody forms. I have some documents at my flat that will be useful.”  


“For?”  


“Making a case to Kent,” he says. “About the terms of Newton’s imprisonment, of course. Also, the state of our current nursing staff. And if that doesn’t work out--” He stops himself. He is unsure, suddenly, of his alternatives.  


“If it doesn’t work out?”  


Hermann shakes his head. “Never mind that. I have concrete evidence against whatever alternative they have proposed, they cannot fight against it.”  


“But if they do--”  


“--if they do, then they are unfit for a leadership position, firstly. Secondly, I am very sorry for interrupting. Thirdly, if they are that stupid, I may also quit and find a way to take Newton with me.”  


“You know the PPDC won’t let you do that.”  


“I am well aware.”  


A pause. “Well,” Mako says. “Let us hope that nobody says no.”  


“Let us hope,” Hermann repeats. The elevator dings, and Hermann rushes out of it. “I may also need Raleigh and Jake’s backing, if need be. Star pilots and all, could be persuasive. I can access his medical records well enough, but I will most likely need to have our data from the drift sessions to back me up.”  


“Done and done.”  


“You are certain that I am not asking too much of you?” Hermann asks as he approaches his flat.  


“I am faithful to my friends.”  


Hermann nods, pulling out his keys and unlocking his door. “Surely with everything Kent will have to agree with me. And if not--” Hermann stops, unable to move or speak, at the sight that greets him in his kitchen.  


Newt, bowl of cereal in hand, smiles. “Hey, dude. You don’t mind that I took the last of the Lucky Charms, right?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the delay! like i said, busy term. also, this chapter was a fucking doozy to write. anyways! 
> 
> steven deknight u can pull newt's legally blind ass from my cold dead hands


End file.
